I walked along the alley between Newbury Street and Boylston Street, and then emerged on Berkeley Street in broad daylight with no place to hide until the heat died down a little. I needed a telephone, too, and unlike New York, Boston doesn’t seem to want to clutter its streets with phone booths.
But right across the street from the alley mouth was the big, red brick, square building of Bonwit Teller’s Boston branch. I couldn’t think of a better place in which to roam around freely for an hour or so. I cut across the street, dodging between the speeding cars like any good Bostonian does, and walked under the long, pale green canopy, up several red-carpeted steps to the entrance, entering the store like any other customer, although most of them were women.
I consulted the store directory. The shoe department on the second floor would be perfect.
Just before I went upstairs, I used one of the telephones at the bottom of the stairwell to put in a call to the Boston Globe.
“City Desk,” I said when I got the switchboard operator. When City Desk answered, I asked if John Reilly were in. He was.
“Can I buy you a drink?” I asked him abruptly without any preamble.
“I never turn down a drink. Who the hell is this?”
“Nick Carter.”
“Oh, Christ! You again?”
I hadn’t seen him or talked to him in more than five years.
“That’s no way to talk to an old friend.”
“The last time I saw you, I let you talk me into doing you a favor that cost me three months in the hospital. I’ve no relish for the smell of antiseptics or having drainage tubes coming out of my body in strange places!”
“It’s nothing like that, John. I need information from your morgue.” A newspaper’s library files are called a morgue.
“Get it yourself,” he snapped.
“I can’t, John.”
The tone of my voice told him more than any words could have.
“It’s that serious?”
“It is.”
“When do I get the drink?”
“As soon as you get the information for me.”
“I’ll meet you at Grogan’s bar in Field’s Corner,” Reilly said. Field’s Corner is the heart of Irish Boston. “And it’ll take more than one drink to satisfy my thirst.”
“No problem. I’ll buy the bottle.”
“Good enough. Now, what is it that you want to know?”
I told him. There was a long pause. When he spoke again, I could hear the excitement in his voice.
“You want me to look through our files on five men,” he summarized, “and to let you know if anything there strikes me as being out of the ordinary?”
“That’s right.”
“Would you by any chance know anything more about these five men whose names you’ve given me? Aside from the fact that they are rich, live in this area, and any one of them can have me fired just by lifting the telephone?”
“I would,” I said. “Those five names were on a list that should have, but didn’t, appear in today’s paper.”
Reilly didn’t bother to ask what list I was referring to. Or how I happened to know about a list pinned to a dead man’s shirt that was never once mentioned in the most lurid news story of the year.
“That could be one hell of a story for me to break,” he said. “Do I get it?”
“Yes, but you’ll never be able to print it.”
I could almost see Reilly’s smile spread out on his freckled face.
“That’s the best kind of story,” he said. “It’s a deal. I’ll see you tonight in Grogan’s bar.”
I hung up. If there was anyone who could dig something out of the files, it would be John Reilly. Reilly’s one of the last of the old-time Boston newspapermen. He’s been on the rewrite desk and on the police beat, on the City Hall beat and the State House beat and back to the police beat a dozen times. He’s known every District Attorney and assistant DA in Suffolk, Norfolk, Middlesex and Essex counties over the past thirty years. He knows enough about the town and its suburbs and about a variety of its citizens, ranging from legislators to petty thieves, to trigger a hundred libel suits if it were ever published. But none of those suits would be won, because Reilly’s info is solid truth. He’s been threatened, shot at and beaten up more than once — until he learned from me to tuck away so much of this information — to be released in case of his death by violence — that one hell of a lot of influential people in the underworld have spread the word that John Reilly is to be protected at all costs!
I went up the red-carpeted stairway. The second floor of Bonwit’s is two stories high. A couple of superbly beautiful crystal chandeliers hang majestically down from the high ceiling to illuminate the displays. Sitting down on a sofa in the shoe department, I made myself comfortable. Then I pulled out the identification bracelet I’d taken from the “bellhop” I’d left unconscious in the stairwell of the Ritz Carlton. Engraved on the flat surface was a name: Henry Newton. I turned the bar of the bracelet over. On its back, engraved large enough for me to see it clearly without a magnifying glass, was the “snake flag” with its motto: “Don’t Tread on Me!”
I wondered if my other assailant, the second “bellhop,” also carried similar identification. What the hell did it stand for?
While my mind was occupied with these thoughts, someone came up quietly from behind, touched me on the shoulder and, as I took in the delicate fragrance of her Chanel perfume, said in her lovely, familiar, slightly husky voice, “Darling, I know I’m late, and I’m so sorry.”
She bent down and kissed me on the cheek. It was all very sweet, and she carried it off beautifully. That was her style. Yesterday she was a tourist, today she was a wealthy, beautiful young Bostonian late for an appointment with her boyfriend.
“Hello, Sabrina,” I said, not bothering to turn my head as she sat down beside me. “How’d you find me?”
“I was told you were here.”
“When did they first spot me?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I wasn’t told that.”
“Probably on the street,” I surmised, thinking out loud. “If they could do that, then they must have had a lot of men around the hotel.”
“Probably.” She was giving nothing away.
“How big is the organization, Sabrina?”
“I don’t know.”
“Or won’t tell?”
“Does it matter?” she asked.
“Not really. Well, what do you want?”
“Personally, I’d love a repeat of last night, darling! However, I’m afraid that will have to wait. Right now I’m to escort you downtown. They’d like to talk to you.”
Before I could reply, she added, “You’ll be perfectly safe. Nothing will happen to you.”
I’ve heard that before. I turned my head to scrutinize her face. Sabrina was dressed in an Ultrasuede outfit in different tones of blue. She wore a short blue skirt with buttons up one side, a blue safari-type jacket over a lighter blue turtleneck jersey, and a blue felt Aussie Digger hat with the brim turned up at one side perched rakishly on her head.
“Like it?” she asked.
“Terrific.” I rose to my feet. There’s no use trying to delay the inevitable.
We took the elevator down to the first floor and headed for the main entrance. Sabrina caught my sideways glance and said, “If you’re thinking of trying to get away, Nick, don’t.”